Mamma was different, too, as if she had shrunk through living in the cramped rooms. She raised her head. The head of a wounded bird, very gentle.
"Why are you sitting up here all alone?"
"Because sometimes I want to be alone."
"Shall I spoil the aloneness?"
"Not if you're a good girl and keep quiet."
Mary sat on the bed and waited till the chapter should be ended.
She thought: "She talks to me still as though I were a child. What would she say if I told her about Aunt Charlotte? She wouldn't know what it was really like. She wasn't there.
"I shall never tell her."
She was thrilled at the thought of her grown-up hardness, her grown-up silence, keeping her mother safe.
Mamma looked up and smiled; the chapter was ended; they went downstairs.